


at ease with shadows

by spider_fingers



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Fugue Feast (Dishonored), M/M, PWP, as in, safe sane consensual, well consensual at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 03:31:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12224838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spider_fingers/pseuds/spider_fingers
Summary: They meet in a pub much like this one.





	at ease with shadows

Teague Martin reaches the Hound Pits Pub just before dawn. He is bruised and his ribs, his wrists, the line of his back are tender: the night has been hard on him. (The night has been harder on others.)

But Havelock is waiting, which of course he can't abide, so Martin does not sit in the boat with the open-faced boatman any longer than he must.

 _The Admiral and the Overseer,_ he thinks. _What a pair we make._

 

*

 

They meet in a pub much like this one --

the leather of the booth seats is splitting; the low light leaves faces aglow, too lifelike, unable to conceal the deep pits under the patrons' eyes; the beer tastes off in a familiar way, a briny tang they all end up craving like fine mead; boots stick to the floor by the end of the night (the very early morning). The only thing missing is the baying of the hounds.

Havelock is sitting at the bar, observing the taps, the disorderly shelves of liquor in the back, comparing everything to the establishment he recently acquired from an ex-guard in debt. He got here a while ago, but the man watching him out of the corner of his eye -- also at the bar, two seats down -- was already here then. The man sips from his tall glass (the glasses are less filmy from bad wiping here) indolently, his half-lidded eyes dark in the dimness of the pub.

After ten seconds of discreet mutual staring, the corner of his mouth quirks. The man makes a short gesture with his glass. It's almost like a greeting, and the roll of his shoulder highlights the leather strapping and tight clerical collar of his blue-black coat. A man of the Abbey.

“Fugue Feast tonight,” Havelock says, speaking to his tumbler of sharp whiskey. The Overseer makes a deep, humming sound, noncommittal. His eyes still flicker back to Havelock every few seconds. “I've heard there's a game you Overseers play...”

The sound the Overseer makes is laughter this time, low. One might say it beckons. “Then I imagine I've heard of it too,” he says, punctuating the sentence with an amber swallow of beer.

Shifting in his chair to face him, Havelock fixes the Overseer with a look that borders on challenging. “It was, if I remember... seeing how many Strictures you can break before the dawn of the next year.”

The sketch of a smile on the Overseer's face turns wry, curling.

“And right now I'm making headway on the First, is that it?”

Havelock frowns. His tumbler is empty, and he is only just starting to feel the skin-deep buzzing of the alcohol running through him; a good start to the Fugue. He doesn't generally indulge in much else. The sea is a surprisingly efficient outlet to the effervescent pressure the common people let out in these days outside the year.

“No, no,” he says, raising his glass to ask for a refill. The bartender is there in a moment, the bottle uncorked, the whiskey gold and heavy in the tumbler; there are few patrons to distract her. The Fugue Feast offers other, better pleasures than drinking your heart away. “I wondered if it was true.”

The Overseer's mouth hangs just barely open, upper lip slick with ale. “Ah.” He turns back to his glass.

Inside the pub, the people are mostly silent; outside, the street is nearly empty. A good part of the celebrations happen in places like Drapers Ward or the Old Waterfront marketplace and drain throngs of people from the rest of the city. When they stop talking, the quiet settles as stifling as the smell of old wine -- but it only lasts a little while.

“... You're a military man. Navy. Recently promoted admiral?”

Havelock turns fully in his chair this time; the Overseer has finished his beer and is watching him openly, a flush starting in on his face. It probably wasn't his first glass. Surprise knocks a dull blink out of Havelock's composure.

“You know me?”

“I'm trying to read your insignia.” He narrows his eyes at the front of Havelock's coat in an exaggerated squint.

“It's uncommon knowledge outside the military, or nobility,” Havelock rumbles, his frown deepening, lips a thin line tight with suspicion. “Were you from noble stock before the Abbey?”

The Overseer snorts. His hand keeps coming up to rub the smooth-shaven skin of his face, scratching at the scar on his chin. “No. Far from it.”

“Then you have a good eye.”

He's smirking now, leaning back on the varnished wood of the bar. “I don't qualify for military then?” The bartender motions to his empty glass. He shakes his head.

“Aren't Overseers recruited young?” Havelock asks, and sips at his whiskey. The Trials of Aptitude are well-known to anyone who can read or has a taste for sordid stories. He heard about them himself years ago, as a much younger sailor.

The Overseer shrugs. “Not all of them. Some... see the light. Face the Trials later in their life.”

“Hm.” There is something to the twist of Havelock's mouth that says he finds this hard to believe. “Sounds like a hard decision.”

“Not one made lightly, in any case.”

“And you survived.”

The Overseer holds out an arm, sweeps a hand down his side. That quirking smile again. “I _am_ standing here.”

The pub has been steadily emptying around them; they're alone now, the bartender rearranging bottles and clean glasses on the shelves, until she turns to them, an elbow on the bartop.

“'M gonna have to ask you gentlemen to leave,” she says in a friendly drawl. “There's only a little while left until Fugue starts proper, and I need the place closed before then.”

The Overseer pushes his glass across to her and straightens his overcoat, the Abbey symbols bold and gleaming on the front of his sleeves. Havelock finishes the rest of his whiskey in a burning gulp and breathes through the cleansing wash of it. They head out together.

The door closes with a final snap behind them. Havelock turns to leave -- and hesitates for a second. He looks to the Overseer still standing next to him.

“Good Feast to you,” he says, then gives a parting nod, and turns back --

He's slammed into the wall by the door, an arm like an iron bar across his chest, and when his hands come up to push the attacker off he finds out the Overseer is _much_ stronger than he'd expected, keeping him effectively pinned -- but he's also not doing anything else, no weapon out or cronies closing in, only leaning into Havelock's space, his breath hot and smelling of beer.

“I've been flirting with you for the past half-hour,” the Overseer says thickly, his drunken voice at odds with the knife-sharp focus of his eyes. “Do you have-- _any_ idea how frustrating it is to painstakingly giftwrap yourself for someone who can't see it happening?”

Havelock's hands, left free -- this really _doesn't_ seem to be an attack -- wrap around the Overseer's biceps. “I thought Overseers were priests before soldiers,” Havelock says, testing the strength of his grip.

He grins, white-toothed. “ _Warfare_ Overseers. Catching heretics isn't a layman's job.”

Havelock heaves, sudden and brutal, and now the Overseer has his back pressed to the bricks, the hand that had kept Havelock's shoulder pinned clenched in his coat like a lifeline.

Air gasps back into the Overseer's lungs. “You going to hit me?” he asks, something mad and desperate swimming under the surface of his eyes. They gleam. Havelock has heard about vivisection, and other strange things that happen at the Academy; he thinks that must feel the same as those eyes on him. “Well? Fugue hasn't quite started, that can be your excuse -- 'he was guilty of the sin of Wanton Flesh' -- I won't even bring up _your_ Wandering G--”

Havelock's lip splits on contact with the Overseer's teeth but he recovers quickly, angling back into the kiss, and the sound the Overseer makes -- off-guard, hungry -- is muffled between their mouths.

Havelock breaks away with a harsh rush of breath.

“Do you never shut up?” he growls, pushing him into the wall, and the Overseer is panting and his smile is wide, the corners of his mouth tight like he's lost the habit.

“Only on holidays,” he retorts, hands sliding down to grab at the waist of Havelock's coat and pull him in closer.

Havelock has to push up against him at that, and bite at his smart mouth, having to stretch to reach. How is this Overseer bastard so infuriatingly _tall?_ Lacking the patience to deal with it, he hooks a hand into the Overseer's tight collar and drags him down to eye-level. The Overseer's breath sounds choked on the next intake, more so when Havelock's hand twists to pull him in and he ravages his silent, begging mouth with teeth and tongue and lips, but his hands still have a deathgrip on Havelock's coat, refusing to let go.

The man pulls back a frantic minute later and, hoarse-voiced: “I have-- rooms, just, a city block away --”

“Lead me there,” Havelock says, cutting in hard, and backs off just enough for the Overseer to stumble upright. He has to fist a hand in the fabric at Havelock's shoulder to keep his legs from folding, and it is only when Havelock finds it difficult to support him because of how the cobbles sway under his feet that he realizes he may be a bit more drunk than he had first assumed.

The Overseer is _very_ handsy. His arm starts out thrown over Havelock's shoulder, his hand dangling mostly limp, but soon those clever fingers are holding Havelock's head still as the Overseer bends into him, warm breath dampening his neck, and _doesn't do anything._ There's just that hand, rasping over his short-shorn hair -- then it migrates again, the arm sliding down to Havelock's waist, the hand to his hip, but when the Overseer's thumb tries to tuck itself into Havelock's pocket he grabs his wrist and pries it away, manhandling him to the nearest vertical surface -- the back of a dumpster -- and staking claim to his mouth for a long, gasping moment. The Overseer's hips stutter into his and he pins them down with his own, hands already busy pressing his wrists to cold, warped metal.

Then the Overseer _bites,_ reopening the split in his lip, and Havelock grips his hair with merciless hands to press a bruise of a kiss into his mouth.

“Come on,” he snarls, dragging the Overseer off again.

The bells start to ring when they're almost there. The Overseer stops in the street, looking up to the black expanse of the sky; here, in the heart of the city, it is a void of stars.

“It's starting,” he says. The Fugue Feast has been rung. Somewhere in Dunwall -- everywhere -- order begins to unravel.

But right here, Havelock snatches the Overseer by the arm -- the man, only a man now -- and pulls him bodily into the dark opening of an alley, then pushes him into the filthy brick wall by his suspenders.

“I could just have you here, now there's no consequence to being seen,” he rumbles, and watches, ravenous, as the pupils in the man's slate-blue eyes swallow the rest of the iris. When the man swallows the knob of his throat bobs visibly under the skin.

Still, he flattens his palms against Havelock's chest like he'll push him away if he must, and his smile is dry, too sober for the loose swaying of his neck, the addled abandon of his kissing. “I'd rather have the comfort and privacy my rooms afford me, if you don't mind.”

Havelock is the one who leans in, this time. Their mouths brush when he speaks. “What if I do mind?”

It takes a second for his hold to be broken -- his arm bent and twisted back, not painful but at the edge of aching, his shoulder blades rubbing together -- and his chest flattened to the bricks, and the man now behind him tucks in close, hips pressing sinuously against Havelock's ass in a sharp snap of movement, voice a throaty breath in his ear.

“Then I suppose you'll have to _deal_ with it.”

They blow through reception, careless, the man in the Overseer coat hauling Havelock after him with their mouths harsh on each other. He loses his balance and slams into the wall at the top of the stairs; Havelock has his hands on the man's belt in a heartbeat, the buckle sounding loud and clear as it dangles, the ties of the man's coat coming undone --

“Almost-- We're, it's door, door seventeen --” he says, his strong hands limp around Havelock's wrists, then -- “Please --” and Havelock lets him fumble for the key and the lock, shoves him through with a predatory snarl on his face. The door snapping shut is a far-off sound.

The Overseer -- the man -- is dishevelled and unbalanced, staring with those starving eyes, his skin too pale under the whale oil lamps except where it flushes red: the sharp points of his face, his forehead, the uncovered skin of his collarbone where the coat has slipped down --

“Undress,” Havelock commands, and watches, a bird of prey, as the man shucks off the coat and belt, loosens his collar then ignores his shirt in favor of his pants -- he forgot his boots, struggles to push them down his legs --

He's muttering, his teeth bared, slick hair gone flyaway, _“Fucking--”_

Havelock surges forward with no warning and the man is thrown back on the bed, given no time to sit up before Havelock kneels, nowhere near supplicant, and peels the man's pants open just enough to get a hand on his cock and his mouth on the shaft.

The sound the man makes is punched-out and agonized. His hips thrust up as he flattens his spine to the mattress; Havelock holds them in both hands to avoid choking. The legs pressed to his shoulders by the confines of the man's pants tremble and jerk. He draws back, flesh sliding slick with spit between his lips, just long enough to ask:

“What's your name?”

“Ma-- mm _mmm_ \--” The low moan echoes all through him, and he goes liquid for a second before tightening and arching like a sail in the wind. “It's-- Martin --” Words bitten off, body heaving with a jerk -- Martin's hand comes down on Havelock's head, fingers clenching in his hair to pull him closer. Havelock obliges. Swallows around him. Martin shivers and keens at a beautifully high pitch.

The hand is pulling Havelock away now, the skin of his scalp stinging, and he growls around the dick in his mouth -- but Martin only cants his hips once in response, breath catching on a gasp, still tugging Havelock away, and Havelock digs his fingers bruisingly hard into the meat around Martin's hips, tempted to use his teeth --

Then Martin brings him back down in one slow slide, hand tight around his head, until Havelock can rest his forehead on Martin's lower belly, the musk of him thick in Havelock's nose -- his member a possessive weight in Havelock's mouth -- almost in his throat --

Havelock moves away again, sucking and short of breath, and back in hard so he can feel his throat working, straining; pretends it's Martin's hand still guiding him though it's gone weak and stroking in his hair. He can feel Martin's stomach jump and quiver under him.

Havelock's hands have loosened, and Martin's hips thrust up into his mouth -- faltering and uneven, too far gone already to keep a rhythm -- and just as Havelock draws his mouth up to suck hard at the head of his shaft Martin gasps, “Shit-- I'm going to--” and comes, writhing like something caught and afraid.

Havelock spits half of the result onto the carpet; the rest he wipes off his face and sucks from his fingers, rising over Martin's prone body with something menacing in his eyes.

“Farley,” Havelock rumbles in a ruined voice, poised an inch away from Martin's pleasure-loose face, and takes Martin's mouth as his due: kissing him wet and sloppy with the taste of his come still coating Havelock's tongue.

There are hands at Havelock's belt, efficient, and Martin rasps their cheeks together as he leans in to his ear, spine curved concave, breath hot in the crook of Havelock's neck. “That was surprising, I'll admit -- Farley,” punctuated with a bite to the lobe of his ear, then lower, the cut of his jaw, until one of the hands at Havelock's waist comes up to cup the back of his head, and the other slides into his pants while he's dragged down to be devoured. Martin's mouth is a possessive thing and Havelock's feels tender and perfectly bruised. He screws into the tight hole of Martin's fist with a stuttering breath.

Havelock's clothes feel like they chafe now, too tight where his arms flex to move him whole-bodied into Martin's grip, too hot and stifling. He sits up, hips still giving steady, shallow thrusts, and wrestles his coat and undershirt off. They're thrown far to the side. His hand closes, merciless, around the solid shape of Martin's wrist to still him.

When he bends down and fits Martin's face into the calloused cup of his palm, he seems a hunching creature in the not-quite-dark of the room.

“You want me to fuck you?” Havelock says. His hands are as steady as the aim of a pistol.

Martin looks at him with gleaming eyes. “No.”

Havelock was already a still, looming shape, but now that stillness has a certainty of movement to it -- coiled muscle, a grenade primed, a fist on the haft of a blade. The hand cradling Martin's face shifts until the webbing between thumb and pointer rests over the knob of his throat. “No?” The rumble of his voice is a quiet threat.

A _promising_ threat, going by the way Martin shifts uneasily, breathlessly, _anticipatory,_ and cranes his head back to push into Havelock's palm. “I only meant-- I'm not--” He has to clear his throat, swallow the rattle lodged there, “-- not clean, moral purity notwithstanding of course --” He cuts off abruptly at the suggestion of pressure Havelock adds to his hold. Breaks out in a flushing wash of sweat when Havelock's hand flexes, testing. His mouth is red and swollen from kissing, wet, half-open -- his eyes hazy with want and the pupils swallowing the iris --

 _So this is what he really looks like when he's desperate,_ Havelock thinks.

His thumb strokes the sinewy column of Martin's neck in idle circles, and that is what seems to draw the man out of his trance.

“I was,” he says, and stops again. Martin's hands have moved to the sturdy shape of Havelock's thighs, just above the knee, and they clench helplessly there every time Havelock presses a little harder into the hollow of Martin's throat. “I was expecting something--” he starts again, breath rushing back into him like he'd forgotten how his lungs worked, “-- along, ah, the lines of, using my mouth for other things than talking, in an alley somewhere --”

“You asked to come here,” Havelock says, calm, and his palm curves over Martin's adam's apple. It's hot there, pressed against the delicate skin. Martin's heartbeat thumps erratic through the artery.

Martin gasps something that might have been a laugh. “I didn't think you'd care what I asked.”

The skin of his shoulder jumps when Havelock runs a finger over the clavicle and tugs down in the valley of his half-undone shirt, then starts finishing the job, buttons slipping free, the fabric pushed away until it's spread either side of him on the sheets like an open skin. Havelock settles a hand, open-palmed, on his quivering stomach. Martin looks caught between languorous and tense -- tips into high-strung when Havelock rises to his knees and moves backwards, off the bed, eyes following the slide of his hand down Martin's hip, his thigh, stopping at his calf where the boot hugs his leg. Havelock's eyes flick up, see Martin staring at him from up on his elbows and breathing in shallow gasps. He takes Martin's ankle in hand and pulls off the boot. Removes the second. Leaves them by the bed, and peels Martin's pants the rest of the way off, then stands, one hand braced on the mattress by Martin's thigh, the other hovering over, barely touching, the angle of his hip.

“Turn over.”

Martin's drunken focus had been incisive, a scalpel to the epidermis; Havelock's is nothing short of blunt force trauma. The bed shakes beneath him when Martin drops, lax, and shudders. Like being struck over the head. He rolls over onto his stomach.

Havelock runs a hand up from his hip to the small of his back and up his spine, every finger pressing in, rucking up the loose cloth of Martin's shirt. He looks smaller like this, somehow; his arms are tucked in close to his chest as though he's trying to disappear into the mattress -- but he's still flushed, sweat slicking the warm expanse of his back, red from his shoulders to the dip of his spine. Havelock leans over him, wishing momentarily he'd kept his shirt on so it would drag, cold and featherweight, across Martin's skin. He seems so sensitive: Havelock knows the touch would leave Martin shaking, arching either for more or for escape. He scratches at Martin's flank with blunt fingertips just to feel him bite on a groan and roll his hips into the bed.

Martin loosens gradually; his hands and body uncurl, no longer defensive, and he grabs handfuls of the sheets instead of startling when Havelock, still half-clothed, slots his hips against Martin's ass.

“I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here,” Martin says, the strain in his voice belied by the way he bucks into the pressure. “I'm all out of kitchen oil and blood makes for terrible lube.” His body is all hunger, but his eyes -- they dart to Havelock and away, glinting with something like resigned anticipation. Havelock wraps a gentle hand around the back of his neck and moves in close to his ear.

“Shut up.”

Havelock's fingers stray to his throat just to feel it work when Martin swallows, and then twist in the short hair above his nape, pushing his face into the mattress. Martin pants and whines, shoulders hitching, hands clenching harder in the covers, and rocks back into it when Havelock grinds tauntingly against him.

Havelock's breaths come ragged and deep. His pants are getting _uncomfortably_ tight.

He solves that problem by flicking open the buttons and shoving them down to his thighs, underclothes following, no further than what he needs to get his cock skin to skin with Martin's hip. His back hunches, spine bending, hips shoving into the feeling of something alive and writhing under him, and Martin heaves up with a shocked, gasping sound -- only for Havelock to tighten the hand in his hair and smother his breathing in the covers again.

Havelock takes hold of his hip and thrusts against the skin again, grunts with the effort of riding Martin's erratic movements -- he keeps pushing back into it, face smashed against the mattress but shoulders and arms straining, the shirt a hopeless tangled mess high on his back, spine shining with sweat and on full display. Havelock bites him there in a twitching ridge of muscle just for another anchor point, and Martin arches violently into the pain, a wild desperate noise fighting out of his mouth, and throws Havelock bodily to the side.

He lands on the floor with a crack. Martin is on him as soon as he draws in breath again.

Havelock loses a split second wondering whether Martin jumped him to defend himself, barely thinks to dislodge Martin's hands where they're braced against his shoulders -- but then Martin rolls his hips and Havelock can feel how hard he's gotten, how wet, cock slick and sliding in the groove of his thigh, grinding down on Havelock with shivering friction. He bites his lip on a half-whispered, half-moaned slew of words, “fucking-- yes, come on,” teeth gritted and bared, “shit yes please ah, _ah, ahghn--_ ” and his cock is a painfully red thing in Havelock's hand, precome dripping thick on Havelock's stomach, the head engorged under the foreskin -- he presses his thumb there, hard, just to see Martin lock up and swear, sweating, still not coming -- then Martin is glaring him straight in the eye and rolling his ass right up against Havelock's cock and _Void,_ a little slicker and he could-- could hold him still, palms on those blade-sharp hips and fuck into him in one slow, steady push -- and Martin would _let him_ \--

He compromises by holding Martin by the waist -- solid muscle sliding under his hands, under the sweat-soft skin -- and fitting his cock in the crack of Martin's ass, spitting in one hand to get himself wet first, and shoving up, uncaring of the hard wooden floor bruising his shoulder blades, the ache where his head hit the boards -- all he knows is the slide of his cock over hot skin -- Martin's, too, a burning line against his belly -- and Martin's mouth, demanding and open on his, snarling kisses biting at his lips, until the churning of heat inside him boils over and he thinks, _Finally,_ a broken huff of breath escaping him, the aftershocks tearing through him savage and brief. Martin takes himself in hand and finishes seconds later.

It's quiet in the room aside from their heavy breathing. Havelock contemplates the angry red prints his hands have left on Martin's sides, sure to go black and blue by sunup; Martin has sagged onto him, head hanging off Havelock's shoulder, breaths steaming on his neck and collarbone. The open sides of Martin's shirt cover them both (though only somewhat).

Martin shifts, making clear how sticky they both are, and huffs in audible disgust.

“I'll be taking a bath, I think,” he says, and Havelock, loosened by the evening's drinking and the night's activities, says,

“You should. I'm not sleeping with a crusty bedmate.”

Martin pauses; Havelock, who has since closed his eyes, doesn't care to open them to know why.

“I hope you're not planning on staying on the floor then,” Martin says, voice weak. “It's bad enough we couldn't be assed to fuck on it.” He retreats. A door opens and closes -- not the one they came in through. The bathroom, then.

Havelock lets himself drift a while; after, when the floor has sucked the warmth from him and the post-coital haze has withdrawn enough for him to feel the aches in his back acutely, he heaves himself up and into the bed, rubbing come off himself with a discarded shirt. Possibly his. No matter -- the Fugue should last long enough for it to be washed. Long enough for it to need washing a second time, even.

He settles, and sleeps. The warm body that joins him some time later barely rouses him at all.

 

*

 

Havelock looks up from his journal when Martin opens the door of his room. It had surprised him, the first time, to see this man so fastidious in writing, his letters neat and practiced.

“Martin,” Havelock says, and Martin answers,

“Farley,”

that old joke they don't quite share. Today Havelock's mouth quirks like he almost finds it funny. He waves Martin in.

“Corvo's sleeping in the attic.” He finishes writing, leaves the journal open on the desk. “We'll speak to him later. “How much does the Abbey know?”

“Not enough to execute me. And now we're rid of Campbell --”

“Then you're sure you can go through with this.”

“Putting me in control of the Abbey was part of the plan.”

“Of course,” Havelock says, harsh. He draws a black notebook -- _the_ black notebook -- from his coat and hands it over. Martin takes a look inside: coded, no surprise. But he can make use of it.

He's been waiting years. Another few days will make no difference.

 

**Author's Note:**

> _At last the heart makes its way_   
>  _past sadness, regret,_   
>  _grows **at ease with shadows**_   
>  _that move like humble servants_   
>  _about the room,_   
>  _sweeping up words_   
>  _where they had fallen_   
>  _as dust motes, unconnected_   
>  _from anything we meant to say;_
> 
> _brushing the edge off memory,_   
>  _turning it face downwards,_   
>  _tending its slow seepage_   
>  _into the daily habit_   
>  _of absence_   
>  _under one roof._
> 
>  
> 
> \-- Esther Phillips, "Near Distance"


End file.
